For months, there’s been a countdown on the Maryland Seafood website, ticking down the months, days, hours, minutes and even seconds to the most anticipated seafood season of the year: crabbing season.

Every Labor Day weekend, people from all over the Mid-Atlantic region visit Maryland’s southernmost town to see some 400 blue crabs compete in one of the most celebrated crustacean events in America, the National Hard Crab Derby.

Virginia will decide next month if it will continue a ban on the winter harvest of blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay. The state’s Marine Resources Commission has had the ban in place for the past three years to rebuild the crab population.